A conversation with the Oregon Black Pioneers' Willie Richardson

Members and leaders of the Oregon Black Pioneers (University of Oregon)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

On May 17, the University of Oregon's School of Architecture and Allied Arts will bestow its annual McMath Award for historic preservation to an organization rather than an individual for the first time. What's more, the award will go to a recipient that has never restored a single historic building or even helped preserve one in any way. And yet giving the McMath Award to the grassroots volunteer organization Oregon Black Pioneers is definitely worthwhile. After all, architecture history is not just the buildings we preserve or say goodbye to, but also the people behind those buildings and their stories. In this way, Oregon Black Pioneers is not simply deserving of recognition but an essential player in telling the complete Oregon story.

Since 1993, the Salem-based Oregon Black Pioneers have produced publications, mounted exhibitions, presented lectures, sponsored conferences, organized musical and theater productions, delivered classroom presentations and curriculum to public schools, and recognized burial sites for African American pioneers. The organization's members have also authored two recent books about black history in Oregon, African Americans of Portland and Perseverance, the latter a history of African Americans in Marion and Polk Counties.

In 2013 the organization also produced “All Aboard: Railroading and Portland’s Black Community,” an exhibition held at the Oregon Historical Society focused on the African American community around Portland’s Union Station from the 1800s to 1940s, and next year will see exhibit of “Racing to Change: Oregon’s Civil Rights Years,” which will be on display at The Oregon History Museum.

As much as Oregon (or at least its larger cities) may now have a reputation for progressive politics, our state has a very racist history, full of KKK marches and exclusionary laws, some of which has kept our percentage of African Americans living here pretty low compared to other states. Yet as Oregon Black Pioneers president Willie Richardson knows, the mission here is not so much to change the past as it is simply to tell the story.

"It’s not just about educating black folks," Richardson said during our interview. "It’s about educating all Oregonians. No matter what you do in Oregon, you’ll find the footprint of a black person that was there. And that’s all over the state. Black folks weren’t congregated in Portland. 32 of Oregon’s 36 counties had African Americans in them. It may be one. But that one has a tremendous amount of impact. They provided services. They owned land. They did all the things that Oregon laws said they couldn’t have. And that’s the peculiar nature of Oregon: laws on the books that aren’t enforced. We had a lot of joy about this. Every day we literally learn something."

Richardson first came to Oregon from South Carolina, and she says living here gave her a different perspective. "I came out not because I knew anything about Oregon. It was more of a family move," she explains. "I had a couple sisters coming from the east coast to Oregon. One had been accepted at Willamette University. That meant the other couple of us said we’d make a move too. We didn’t know anything about Oregon. And after six months if I wasn’t so broke I’d have probably packed up and left. There’s a huge difference coming out of the south, where you’ve lived in a basically segregated environment, to Oregon where any given day you probably weren’t going to see anyone who looked like you from one hour to the next. But with four sisters coming at the same time, we looked to each other. It would have been to a slight degree a little bit more concentrated with North, Northeast Portland. Salem was very different in that you did not have that: no concentration of anybody. You basically lived in a neighborhood where you were the only black person. It was a stark difference. But it worked itself out in that one of the things I tell folks who come here, particularly African Americans, is that Oregon will teach you how to live amongst people—not black people, not white people. You have to learn how to live with people—if you allow it to happen."

"If you blend it all together and put it in its rightful place, you get the full breadth of Oregon," Richardson says of the Oregon Black Pioneers' storytelling efforts. "Few as it may have been in terms of minorities here, those people have been significant to the development of the state. It’s about knowing how we got there: the pathways that were out there and cleared for the rest of the folks like me who can keep moving: giving honor to them. If they had not come with their slave masters into the state and figured out a way to survive, I would not be here."

At the heart of the award, and the Oregon Black Pioneers' effort, is what Richardson calls "history out there that’s not talked about. You didn’t hear about it when you heard about the Oregon story and the Oregon Trail or any story about Oregon. You never heard of the thread regarding the African American input into it. That just pushed us further down the road. We began to tell that story and share it with the rest of the state. Along the way, we also discovered there were other folks, white folks, who also wanted to be part of helping tell that story and ferret out information. We’d say to groups of people as they came out, 'We need you to understand something: you have the information. You still have your family diaries, letters, stories that you were told. You still have all of that in your records or your memory. We’re asking you to share that with us: not to use it to beat you up because your ancestors had a slave on their property or racist beliefs in their past. We don’t care about that. We want the stories and the histories. All we want is the Oregon story to be accurate. We can’t change history. But help us write and tell the African American story, so we can convince the historians to share the names of African Americans as pioneers.' The logging story would not have been successful without African American. Mining would not be successful. The Oregon Trail would not be the Oregon Trail without black folks, without slaves being on that trail. People could not understand that slaves were on the Oregon Trail. We said, how do you think those white folks crossed all that terrain without a slave to help them? Don’t forget that they were on that trail and they came into Oregon. Stop thinking all-white for everything."

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Excellent article. I am now excited for next year's "Racing to Change: Oregon’s Civil Rights Years,” exxhibit.
In my opinion, the best part of this article was capturing the spirit and intent embodied in the words "...Oregon will teach you how to live amongst people—not black people, not white people. You have to learn how to live with people—if you allow it to happen. "If you blend it all together and put it in its rightful place, you get the full breadth of Oregon".
This should be captured in a quote and put on a plaque with a picture of Willie and her sisters.